CHAPTER IX

ILLNESS AND DEATH

In this class of news stories are included those concerning the illness or death of persons known in the community or in the world at large, as well as those dealing with illness, surgical operations, and deaths that are sufficiently unusual to be matters of general interest. Stories of this kind are primarily informative in character, but the importance of the personal element permits effective human interest development. Pathetic phases of illness or death sometimes give value to news that otherwise would be of slight interest. The seriousness of the subject demands dignity of treatment.

In writing an obituary the purpose should be not only to give biographical facts but to bring out the significance of a personality. A well written obituary is a constructive interpretation of the meaning of a person’s life and work.

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ILLNESS

_Kansas City Star_

NEW YORK, Nov. 23.--Ye Olde Caxton Book Shop, Brooklyn, was closed long after 7 o’clock yesterday morning. Nobody stirred behind the brown paper curtains which hung on a coarse string over an improvised cross wall of musty old volumes, their titles long ago hidden beneath a layer of dust.

Solicitous neighbors, tradesmen of the block, children on their way to school peered eagerly, but vainly, through the rain-streaked window, beyond careless rows of less ancient authors and orderless festoons of classical sheet music. Mere solicitude increased to anxiety, and anxiety to fear that an old man, loved by the neighborhood, had died among his treasures.

Some one told the police and two men came to force the door, with an ambulance surgeon from the Bushwick Hospital, ready to give him aid if needed. Richard Wright was not dead, but how much longer he would have lasted if help had not come is uncertain. He lay there on a rude couch, home made and stretched across cases of books in the back of his store. Hunger, added to the natural weakness and feebleness of his 78 years, had almost claimed him for its victim.

“No, no,” he feebly said. “Don’t take me to the hospital; I’m too old. I don’t want to cause trouble to anyone. I want to die quietly among my books.”

Nailed against one of the bookcases was a small notice on black tin, “We refer all needy cases to the Brooklyn Charity Bureau.”

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INDIAN DYING

_Milwaukee Free Press_

Tse-Ne-Gat is very weary.

Soon he must go on the long, long journey, following the shadowy trail of all his people.

For the white man’s plague has laid its ruthless hand upon him, and the white man’s plague has done what the white man’s rifles and the white man’s courts could never do. It has broken the spirit of Tse-Ne-Gat, and the heart of sorrowful old Ma Old Polk.

It was while he waited for the white man’s court to sit, that the plague came to Tse-Ne-Gat. Justice the white man gave him, but with justice came the plague. This is the story of it:

Tse-Ne-Gat, so the government said, murdered Juan Chacon, Mexican sheep-herder, and for the slaying Tse-Ne-Gat must be hanged. Cowboys and ranchers rode into the hills to take him, and Tse-Ne-Gat, his father and a few followers fought them off. They had sworn that they would not yield to all the armed forces of the United States, for they knew Tse-Ne-Gat had not killed the sheep-herder, and the Ute should not die a shameful death unjustly.

Then Gen. Hugh Scott, U. S. A., rode into the hills alone. He promised that the Indian should have justice, and Tse-Ne-Gat was content. Out of the hills he rode with Scott, out of the hills and into the white man’s jail. There he waited until the white man’s court should sit to grant him justice.

In the jail were other prisoners, and the great white plague stalked silently among them. Tse-Ne-Gat, pining for the hills and the arroyos and the great open spaces of the Ute reservation, was a shining mark for its unseen fatal arrows. So Tse-Ne-Gat began to cough the cough that all men, white or red, fear most of all, for it has not even the swift mercy of the rifle bullet.

Attorney W. J. Kershaw, when the call for his help came from Colorado, left his office in the Germania building[C] to appear as counsel for Tse-Ne-Gat, and before the court of United States Judge Robert E. Lewis, in Denver, he acquitted him. And Tse-Ne-Gat was free to go back again to the reservation. Only, the order of the court could not free him from the white man’s plague, which the white man’s jail had given him.

[C] Milwaukee.

So Tse-Ne-Gat and old Ma Old Polk went to a hospital, near Denver. Tse-Ne-Gat made for himself a long whistle from the green stalk of a plant. On it he whistled, imitating the calls of the birds he knew, and so well did he do it that the birds answered and came to the yard of the great hospital. That sight the other sufferers there loved, the sight of Tse-Ne-Gat wrapped in his blanket, whistling softly to the birds that gathered at his feet to eat of the crumbs he scattered for them when they answered his call.

More troubles came. The white man’s doctor said that he might not smoke and live. His cigaret was banished. Ma Old Polk was determined that he should not smoke, so she fought the craving with him as she watched him. Neither did she smoke, for his sake, and from the deprivation she suffered more than he, only she could slip out to the reeds by the river now and then when the demand seemed irresistible.

Back at the reservation, Tse-Ne-Gat felt better. The call of the woods grew stronger, and one morning Ma Old Polk awoke to find that her son and his gun were missing, gone no one knew where. That night he returned, exhausted and broken, until he could scarcely bear his gun. He wrapped himself in his blanket, too tired even to whistle for the birds. It was two weeks before the watchful mother heard of the rabbits Tse-Ne-Gat had shot but had been forced by weakness to throw away before he brought them home.

That is the story that has come to Milwaukee and to Tse-Ne-Gat’s attorney here, who cannot help him in this fight. Tse-Ne-Gat still goes walking, but not so far. He walks as one weary of long traveling. Sometimes he disappears for half an hour or more. If the doctors suspect that he is following the example of his mother and stealing the smoke he loves so well, they say nothing. They have nothing but sympathy for Tse-Ne-Gat.

Tse-Ne-Gat has sympathy, too, for the judge who gave him justice. For he has learned that on the very day that the story of his own rapidly failing life had been reported to Judge Robert E. Lewis a telegram had come to the judge, telling him that his father, Col. Warner Lewis, was dead. Col. Warner Lewis was the only survivor of an Indian massacre in 1863 near where Coffeyville, Kas., now stands. And it was the son of that sole survivor of Indian vengeance who gave justice and freedom to Tse-Ne-Gat.

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SURGICAL OPERATION

_Milwaukee Sentinel_

The surgeon’s knife instead of the reformatory; an operation in place of an application of “the rod.”

Is this the manner in which wayward youths are to be made good?

The strange case of Anton Heim, a 14 year old Milwaukee lad, at least lends emphasis to the vast possibilities for the skilled surgeon as a reformer of certain criminally inclined persons.

As he came from a good family, there seemed to be no hereditary reason why Anton should be addicted to stealing and other mischievous acts. His case was a puzzle until physicians learned that at the age of 5 he had been the victim of an accident in which a door had fallen on him and caused a dent in his skull, and it was their theory that the consequent pressure on the brain might have unsettled his mind and thus affected his actions.

The operation was performed on Oct. 19 in Trinity hospital by Dr. W. C. F. Witte.

Since then Anton’s taciturn, irritable disposition has given way to ambitious and honest traits. The operation has not only meant much for Anton Heim, but is full of significance as to possibilities along these lines.

Another case is cited by a Milwaukee physician wherein a Norwegian youth who received a skull injury in his childhood before coming to America, has been relieved through a similar operation and been changed from a dependent to a self-supporting man.

“Persons suffering from such skull injuries,” explained the physician, “are irritable, depressed and subject to an idea that they are being persecuted. This Norwegian lad previous to the operation was thoroughly shiftless. Now he has been holding a position for three years and has recovered his ambition and desire to work and save money.”

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SURGICAL OPERATION

_Philadelphia Inquirer_

WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 19.--By massaging the heart of a colored boy who was apparently dead, doctors in the Emergency Hospital succeeded in reviving him.

The boy was under the influence of chloroform, and the surgeon was operating on an infected knee, when respiration suddenly ceased. The pulse died and finally stopped; the body became cold, the limbs rigid. Artificial respiration was resorted to, but there was no responding pulsation of the heart. After six minutes of suspense, during which the physician resorted to every possible method to revive the patient, he realized that there was only one chance to save the boy’s life.

With delicate skill he opened the boy’s abdomen and for seven minutes massaged the patient’s heart with his fingers. Finally, when he was about to give up all hope, the boy took a faint voluntary breath, and for several minutes the heart pulsated gently. Plying the heart with his fingers to stimulate circulation of the blood, the physician after eighteen minutes had the heart pulsating normally and knew that he had succeeded in his almost miraculous operation.

For a day and a half following the operation the boy remained in excellent condition and every hope was held out for his recovery. But the infection of the knee had spread to the left side and had infected the glands of the neck. Blood poisoning set in and, despite all efforts to save him, the boy succumbed.

The operation on the heart is regarded by medical students as unique in the annals of medicine. It also opens up a new field in surgery, and means, physicians say, that many persons who expire while under anesthetics may possibly be revived by such methods.

Within a few months several eminent physicians of this city will conduct vivisection tests to determine how far the heart massage can be carried. Dogs will be placed under anesthetics and allowed to succumb, it is said, so that physicians may determine after how long an interval an animal apparently dead may be restored by heart massage.

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SUDDEN DEATH

_Chicago Inter Ocean_

While joking with several fellow employes over the recent baseball trade between the Chicago American league baseball team and the New York American league team, Robert Nash, 118 Webster Place, a clerk employed by Sprague, Warner & Co., 600 West Erie street, dropped dead from heart disease yesterday in his place of employment.

Herman Schweitzer, 2849 Christiana avenue, a department manager, and J. B. Willott, 508 Melrose avenue, were hoaxing Nash about the trade. They told Nash that the Chicago team had obtained Chase of the New York team, a “hoodoo,” and that they would be unable to win any more games.

Nash laughed at their joke and walked to a chair. He fell to the floor, and was dead when a physician arrived.

Nash was one of the oldest employes of the Sprague-Warner company. He had been in the grocery company for thirty-seven years. Heart disease is believed to have caused his death.

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ENGINEER’S DYING REQUEST

_Boston Herald_

CHICAGO, Dec 21--Charles W. Walter, veteran conductor on the Nickel Plate Railroad, died yesterday on his run from Bellevue, O, to Chicago, and members of the train crew fought snow and slippery tracks to carry out Walter’s last request that No. 1 be brought in on time, thereby preserving his record of never having been late.

Walter took the train at Bellevue, where he lived, at 7:55 a. m. yesterday. An hour later he became ill and placed the train in charge of Samuel Wilson, an extra passenger conductor.

“Be sure and bring her in on time, Sam, and keep my record clean,” Walter requested. Stops were shortened to a minimum. The engineer kept the sand running on the slippery rails, and his fireman hardly took his hands from the shovel.

Near Leipsic Junction, where doctors and ambulance awaited, Walter died. No. 1 pulled into the Lasalle-st Station, Chicago, on the dot. To the dispatcher, who was surprised to see him report instead of Walter, Wilson said: “Charlie has made his last run, and be sure to put it down we’re on time.”

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WOMAN DIES ALONE

_Kansas City Star_

Police officers forced their way into the home of Miss Mary R. Wilson, daughter of John H. Wilson, a former mayor of Kansas City, at 961 Cane Street, shortly before 6 o’clock yesterday afternoon, and found her dead in bed in her room on the second floor. Dr. Harry Czarlinsky, county coroner, said that the cause of death was pneumonia brought on by exposure.

Since the death of her mother seven years ago, Miss Wilson had lived in the big house on Cane Street alone. She kept no servants and her only companion was a pet dog, Danny. Miss Wilson, who was more than 50 years old, had ignored the advice of friends, who believed she should live with relatives.

She was last seen alive Thursday night, when Mrs. B. F. Strong, wife of B. F. Strong, the vicar of St. James Church, who lives at 965 Cane Street, noticed her moving about in the rear of the house with a lamp. Friday passed without either Mrs. Strong or Mrs. Albert Hart, the neighbor north of the house, seeing Miss Wilson. The snow had drifted evenly over the front walk and the blinds at the window were drawn.

Mrs. Hart telephoned Sanford B. Green and Porter Home, Miss Wilson’s attorneys. Mr. Green called several of Miss Wilson’s intimate friends and was unable to find out anything of her whereabouts. He then called the chief of police and asked that a search of the house be made.

When the officers entered the room, they found Miss Wilson attired in night clothing lying on her bed. Her pet, Danny, was curled up at the foot of the bed. Weak from want of food, he growled at the officers. The coroner said that life had been extinct twenty-four hours.

A small diary which Miss Wilson had kept for years testified to her illness. An entry Tuesday read: “I haven’t felt well all day.” Wednesday it said: “I think the weather has brought on an attack of grip.” Thursday’s entry was the last in the book: “I know I’m in for a bad case of pneumonia.” No explanation can be given why Miss Wilson did not get medical attention when she knew she had pneumonia.

Miss Wilson was a niece of the late David Brewer, associate judge of the United States Supreme Court. Her father figured actively in Kansas City politics as a leader of the Democratic party and in 1874 was elected mayor of this city, a position which he held two years. He was a widely known business man. Miss Wilson’s only sister, Ella Wilson, died in Leavenworth, Kas., in 1865. Her mother, Mrs. Alice Strong Wilson, died in the family home on Cane Street in 1907. Miss Wilson had no relatives in Kansas City.

The body was taken to the Stine undertaking rooms.

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DEATH OF VETERAN FIREMAN

_Springfield Republican_

William C. White, 72, veteran fireman, who was retired from the active service of the fire department last June after 35 years of continuous service, died at the Wesson Memorial hospital yesterday after a long illness. Mr White had been identified with the fire service of the city for more than 50 years. During his period of active service, Mr White spent most of his time as engineer, taking charge during his later years of the engines in the North-street fire station. During his 35 years of service, Mr White was absent from his post only one month, and then on account of illness. There was probably no man in the department who was better known or who was better liked by the men in the department. He was a skilful machinist, and his worth to the department was frequently recognized by the different chiefs under whom he served.

Mr White was born at Amherst, October 11, 1842. He removed with his parents to this city when he was 12 years old. He received his early education in his native town, and after he came here he attended the Union-street school. His first employment was in the United States armory, where he practically completed his trade as machinist. He subsequently worked for Smith & Wesson for four years as tool-maker, and it was there that he received the training which fitted him for his work in the fire department. While he was employed at the Smith & Wesson shop, he became a call man in the fire department. He was appointed to the permanent service in 1872, just nine years after he became affiliated with the department as a call man.

His first active duties were as hose-man. He was stationed at the old fire station, formerly located in the rear of where the Granite building is now. His next work was as stoker on the Hanson No 2 engine, stationed on Sanford street. He later became a full-fledged engineer on the old monitor, George Dwight. Mr White was later assigned to the Pynchon-street engine-house, where he served as engineer on the No 1 engine. He was stationed there from 1872 until 1876. In 1876 he was transferred to the Bond-street engine-house, where he remained until his retirement in June. It was a matter of notable record in the fire department that during all this time he ran the old No 1 engine without experiencing any accidents or having his engine tied up because of failure to work properly.

When Mr White first became affiliated with the fire department there were but four companies, with 26 men each, in service in the city. The companies were located on Pynchon street, on the Hill, near the old railroad station, and on Sanford street. During the early ’70’s the system of naming fire engines was succeeded by the present system of numbering them. When Mr White entered the service, L. H. Powers was chief engineer, and he was succeeded by Hosea Lombard. It was during his regime as chief that the present department actually came into existence. It is a singular fact that Mr White saw service in the department during the period that Springfield experienced its biggest fires. From the date of his connection with the department until his retirement there were seven very disastrous fires.

During his many years in the department he was constantly drafted from one engine-house to another to do repair work. His expert knowledge of apparatus made him invaluable in this respect. When the company at the Bond-street engine-house was transferred to the North-street station several years ago, he went with it and remained there until his retirement, June 15 of this year. Mr White held several patents on devices used on fire apparatus, but never troubled to have them put on the market. Some of these devices, however, have been used with satisfaction.

Mr White was taken ill last May, and it was with difficulty that he was persuaded to leave the active list. He eventually went to the Wesson Memorial hospital, where he remained constantly until his death yesterday. Mr White was married, and for many years lived at 961 Second street. His wife died a number of years ago, and since that time he has made his home at the North-street fire station. He was a member of De Soto lodge of Odd Fellows and of the Firemen’s aid association. He leaves no near relatives, but Arthur Green, secretary of the Putnam woolen mills at Putnam, Ct., a cousin, is expected in this city to take charge of the funeral.

The funeral will be held to-morrow afternoon at Washburn’s chapel. Rev Dr Frank W. Merrick of Faith church will officiate. The burial will be in the Springfield cemetery.

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DEATH OF A POLITICIAN

_New York Times_

Martin Engel is dead. This does not mean anything to those unacquainted with New York politics, nor to those whose political interests have been quite recently developed, but to the “old-time” politicians familiar with the days when “Boss” Croker ruled Tammany Hall and “Big Tim” Sullivan was the man highest up in the Bowery district the death of Martin Engel means the passing of another of the Tammany leaders who led when to be an east side leader was greater than to be a silk-stocking Republican.

At the age of 68, several years after he had lost his leadership in the old Eighth District--“De Ate,” to those who were of it and in it in the “good old days”--Martin Engel died yesterday in his home at 29 East Third Street. He made money in his business of politics, and it is said that his son, Alfred S. Engel, will inherit a comfortable fortune. His death was due to Bright’s disease, from which he had been a sufferer for some time.

Martin Engel rose to political power when the immigrant Jews from Russia, Rumania, Bohemia, and Hungary began to crowd the Irish out of the east side. The son of a “kosher” butcher, he was born in the Bowery and began life, after leaving the public schools, in his father’s butcher shop. After the death of the father he continued the business, and even after his business became politics and his “office” for all important purposes was in “Silver Dollar” Smith’s Hotel, near the Essex Market Court, he remained the nominal head of the market, from which fact he became known in the east side as “Butcher” Engel.

“Big Tim” Sullivan, Irishman, and Martin Engel, Jew, were the combination that held the power in “De Ate,” where fully 80 per cent. of the fixed and floating voters spoke Yiddish. Engel was apparently devoted to Sullivan, and was ever faithful to “Big Tim” in matters political, and, until the Republican leader, “Charley” Adler, began to make trouble in the Eighth, he always “swung the district” at election time.

Those who followed Engel as their political leader could never, in their own opinion, exaggerate his virtues. He was generous, as all Tammany leaders of the east side have been, and he was successful in “landing jobs” for those who served the party. Also he was known to have a strong “pull” with the police, and many an east side youth who “got in bad” with the authorities owed his liberty to Engel’s influence. Because of all these things he was the leader, and because he was the leader he cultivated the character and quality that enhanced his leadership.

But to reformers Engel was the personification of a vice that, though seen with disturbing frequency, could never be even endured, much less embraced. In “De Ate” was what was known for many years as “The Red Light District.” Engel’s political enemies used to dwell with views of alarm upon the protection under which the district thrived, and Engel was always named as the protector.

Those who have seen Engel remember as his most striking facial characteristic a “dented” nose. The bridge of his nose had been broken, and until his death there was a depression in the centre of his face that never failed to attract attention. The scar was a mark of Engel’s rise to political power. He received the original injury in a fight years ago--and there have been stories of this fight to Engel’s credit and to his discredit. The only positive and printable fact is that a man who became enraged against Engel struck him across his nose with a bung-starter or some other equally destructive weapon.

Besides “Silver Dollar” Smith’s hotel, which later became the property of Engel himself, the leader of “De Ate” had several “headquarters” in the district where those who knew his habits and haunts might find him. His home was at 29 East Third Street, where he died; but in the days of his power he could be found most often at some of his “hanging-out” places--such as the clubrooms of the Martin Engel Association, at Ludlow and Grand Streets, or the old Café Boulevard, in Second Avenue, where, for a number of years, he regularly received his henchmen between noon and 3 o’clock.

Although the kind of politics accepted as legitimate by Engel is passing for the good of society, there are those in the east side who will feel real regret for the death of their former leader, for whatever his vices were, Engel was sympathetic and generous in his own way and in his moods, and many a family would not have eaten had he not supplied a meal, many a man or woman would have gone barefoot had he not furnished shoes. Also, many a “down-and-outer” would have gone thirsty if Engel had not “set ’em up” to the drinks. So, somewhere east of the Bowery, where there were not many of the Ten Commandments, and where a man could raise a very great thirst, Engel had his friends who will mourn him now.

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DEATH

_New York Evening Post_

The odor from the chestnut roasters is as fragrant as ever, the heaped-up mounds of lettuce and kale on the mile of push carts are just as crisp and green, and there is the same glistening sheen on the pyramids of green and scarlet peppers, but, nevertheless, things seemed altogether different in Mulberry Bend to-day. There was less noise, the hurdie-gurdies were not playing, and groups of dark-haired women talked solemnly on the corners.

Down in front of No. 26 there were many children looking into the window, but, unlike children of the Bend, making no noise. That’s where the cause of all this change was. For No. 26 is Charles Bacigalupo’s chapel and undertaking rooms, where for twenty-eight years the services for the dead of the Italian colony have been held; and now--Bacigalupo himself is dead.

He was much more than an undertaker. He was a benefactor of the quarter, a man with a motto of his own that he lived up to. It hardly could be called a business motto, but Bacigalupo always adhered to it in his business, and it was that no Italian should be buried in the Potter’s Field, if he could help it.

A north of Italy man and a devout Catholic himself, “Charlie,” as the colony called him, never asked what a dead man’s religion had been or whether he was Sicilian, Neapolitan, or Genoese. The chapel was always open, day and night, and there was always a hearse and at least one carriage ready whether there was anything to pay for them or not.

It was so in the beginning, twenty-eight years ago, when Bacigalupo, who had come to the country when he was thirteen, decided that he would no longer work for undertakers by day and black boots on Broadway in the evening, but go into business for himself.

He had saved money enough then to buy a second-hand hearse and a dilapidated hack. At the outset he had to hire the horses, and the only room in which he could do his work was the one room in which he lived.

Within a week after this start an Italian was murdered on Mulberry Street. Nobody knew him, and the body, after the coroner had got his routine description of all the knife wounds for repetition in court, was to go to Potter’s Field--after the usual custom. But Bacigalupo changed the custom so far as Mulberry Bend was concerned. There was a real funeral in his room for the unknown victim of the stiletto, and the man who could not afford to keep his own horses did all the work and paid all the bills.

That was when the motto was adopted, and the records at Bacigalupo’s chapel today show that he has saved nearly a thousand “unknowns” and “unfortunates” from the Potter’s Field.

Most of them were Italians, but some were the more unfortunate white girls of Chinatown.

He prospered in spite of all this free service and he has averaged three funerals a day for ten days. From the one room his place developed into a whole floor, and for the living room in which services were held for that murdered Italian twenty-eight years ago, there was substituted a fine chapel with altar fires and many pictures and tapestries, which Bacigalupo brought from Rome on his return from frequent visits to his home country.

But as gorgeous and elegant as the place became, in the eyes of the Italian quarter, it was still free for all who could not pay.

Bacigalupo never talked about these things himself when asked about his business life in the Bend. It was his private business, the number of big black hearses he sent, free of charge, for the laborers who had died while out of work, and the number of small white hearses with the angel figures on the side which he had provided for the children whose parents were penniless. Neither would he talk about the times he had paid other people’s coal bills or put a stop to dispossession proceedings by paying the rent of people whom he simply knew as Italians.

And only his intimate associates knew that he owned a half-acre in Greenwood Cemetery and another big lot in Calvary, in which he put the bodies which otherwise would have gone to the graveyard of the morgue’s unknown.

All these things Bacigalupo was remarkably reticent about. On the other hand, there were some things that he liked to boast of. He used to say, for instance, that the proudest day in his life was that in which he drove, himself, the second coach in Gen. Grant’s funeral. He groomed his own horses for that procession.

And when Meucci, the Italian patriot who came over with Garibaldi, died on Staten Island Bacigalupo had charge of the big Italian funeral service, in Tammany Hall, and it was the undertaker of Mulberry Bend who prepared the revolutionist’s body for shipment to Italy.

When King Humbert was assassinated Bacigalupo had charge of the memorial service in this city. And now the most conspicuous pictures at the entrance to the chapel are those of the dead King and of President McKinley, both nearly life size.

Bacigalupo also took a little pardonable pride in the fact that his establishment had grown to include a big stable with 250 horses, 10 hearses, and many coaches; that he had the only automobile hearse in town, and that it was he who introduced the custom of having dirge-playing bands in the funeral processions on the Bend.

Four years ago Bacigalupo went to Rome to present to the Pope $5,000 which had been contributed by the immigrants in the Italian quarter, and to the money he added as his own gift a wonderful jewelled robe for his holiness. The Pope granted him an audience and gave him his picture and autograph, which Bacigalupo brought back to Mulberry Street.

Then there was that wonderful Chinese funeral several years ago when the bones of nine Chinamen were removed from a Brooklyn cemetery and sent back to the ancestral graveyards in China. Bacigalupo had that affair, and it overtaxed even his stable resources, for there were 300 coaches in the procession that wound through the streets of Chinatown, all filled with Chinamen, while the rest of the Mott and Pell Street colony walked behind over the route laid out for them by the Italian.

These were the things that the undertaker was willing to talk about when he was asked what he had done in America. But they are of secondary importance on the Bend to-day. It is the coal bills, and helps with the rent in hard times, and the free funerals that everybody in the quarter, including the policemen on their beats and the one black native from Abyssinia who speaks Italian, are talking about now that the crepe is on Bacigalupo’s own door.

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DEATH OF GREAT EDITOR

_Philadelphia Ledger_

KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 13.--Colonel William Rockhill Nelson, founder, owner and editor of the Kansas City Star, died at his home here this morning. He was 74 years old, and had been confined to his home since last December. Uremic poisoning caused his death.

Colonel Nelson took an active part in the management of the Star until about a month ago, for even after his illness began members of the Star staff gathered at his bedside several times weekly for discussion of questions of editorial policy. At these conferences he dictated editorials and outlined ideas for cartoons and special news articles. Although his physicians advised against this activity, he reminded them that it was in the building of the Star he had been happiest.

A day or so before he became unconscious Colonel Nelson said to a friend:

“The Lord has been far better to me than I deserve. I have had a long and happy life, with great opportunities for usefulness. My only regret is that I have not accomplished more. If this is the end, I am ready.”

Throughout his illness the problem of the poor was of intense concern to him. He made large gifts to local charitable institutions and was absorbed in the work of a soup kitchen, which his daughter, Mrs. Kirkwood, inaugurated and conducted.

While no formal statement was made, it was announced that “as far as is humanly possible, the Star will be conducted in accordance with the aims and ideas of Mr. Nelson.”

Although Colonel Nelson did not enter the newspaper field until he was nearly 40 years old, he brought to it such ability and energy that he built up one of the greatest newspapers of the country. He was born in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1841, and was educated at Notre Dame University. After a short experience in cotton growing he became a general contractor. When 34 years old he was Samuel J. Tilden’s Indiana campaign manager.

His interest in political leadership caused him to turn to newspaper work. He bought an interest in the Fort Wayne Sentinel and a business reverse caused him to decide to devote all his time to journalism. He and his Fort Wayne partner, Samuel E. Morss, went to Kansas City and started the Evening Star on September 18, 1880. Mr. Morss withdrew after a few months.

When the Kansas City Times failed, in 1901, the Star bought that paper and its news franchise. The venture proved a marked success, and the Star now has a circulation, morning and evening, of more than 200,000 a day.

In politics Colonel Nelson was, as he often said, “independent, but never neutral.” He never would consider any elective or appointive position.

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DEATH OF COLLEGE DEAN

_New York Evening Post_

John Howard Van Amringe, former dean of Columbia College, where for half a century he endeared himself to thousands of students, who knew him best as “Van Am,” died suddenly yesterday at the Keeler House, in Morristown, N. J. Professor Van Amringe, who was seventy-nine years old last spring, retired from the Columbia faculty five years ago, and for some time past his health has been failing. He suffered a stroke of apoplexy just before luncheon, and died within an hour. His daughter, Miss Emily Van Amringe, was with him.

The story of the venerable ex-dean’s life is almost a history of Columbia College for the last fifty-odd years. To Columbia men he was more than a teacher. As Charles Halsted Mapes remarked, when the alumni presented a bronze bust of the dean to the Columbia University Club, in 1913: “Van Am has become more than a mere man to us; he is a sentiment. What the Yale fence is to Yale, the ivy to Princeton, Van Am is to Columbia--a tangible, concrete expression of sentiment to which our memories lovingly cling.”

He was born at Philadelphia, on April 3, 1836, the son of William Frederic and Susan Budd (Sterling) Van Amringe. His grandfather, Lionel Van Amringe, was a soldier under Frederick the Great, and emigrated from Holland in 1791. His family removed from Philadelphia to New York in 1841. He received most of his early education from his father, but was later sent to the Montgomery Academy, Orange County, N. Y., where his father was instructor for a time. In 1854 he entered Yale, and would have graduated in 1858, but left the College at the end of his sophomore year and taught private pupils for two years. In the fall of 1858 he entered Columbia College as a member of the junior class, graduating with the degree of B.A. in 1860.

Van Amringe, the undergraduate, displayed a fondness for mathematics and debating, and in after years these were always his favorite subjects. Those who listened to him in more recent years, addressing undergraduate mass meetings or speaking at alumni reunions, or presenting some distinguished candidate for this or that honorary degree on commencement day, could trace his flow of oratory back to its beginnings in the classroom, where, as a student, he used to hold forth in the presence of old Professor Nairne, who taught moral and intellectual philosophy and literature. Nairne had a way of holding impromptu debates in the classroom, pitting one student against another. But it was in mathematics that Van Amringe excelled, and he taught this subject to generations of Columbia men.

When Van Am came to Columbia he was possessed of a brilliant head of red hair, which in later years turned white. He also wore flowing moustaches, and these became immortalized in the song that Columbia men never tire of singing:

D’ye ken Van Am with his snowy hair, D’ye ken Van Am with his whiskers rare, D’ye ken Van Am with his martial air, As he crosses the Quad in the morning?

CHORUS.

The sight of Van Am raised my hat from my head, And the sound of his voice often filled me with dread, Oh, I shook in my boots at the things that he said When he asked me to call in the morning.

Yes, I ken’d Van Am, to my sorrow, too, When I was a freshman of verdant hue. First a cut, then a bar, then an interview With the Dean in his den in the morning.

But we love Van Am from our heart and soul, Let’s drink to his health! Let’s finish the bowl! We’ll swear by Van Am through fair and through foul, And wish him the top o’ the morning.

D’ye ken Van Am with his fine old way, The Dean of Columbia for many a day? Long may he live and long may he stay Where his voice may be heard in the morning.

One of his undertakings at Columbia was the organization of the Alumni Association of Columbia College, which he began as soon as he had become an alumnus himself. The Association was then more dead than alive, but through his efforts it has become the most flourishing and influential of all the Columbia alumni organizations.

The dean had few outside interests; his life was devoted almost entirely to Columbia, and the few other activities in which he engaged were closely allied to his work at the College. He was a member of the American Mathematical Society and of the New York Historical Society, and, at one time, was president of the New York Mathematical Society. He was also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a vestryman of Trinity Church. Some years ago he edited a series of Davies’s mathematical works.

As prime mover in the organization of the Columbia University Club, he was its first president, and there never has been any other.

As an authority on matters relating to the history of the University he was without an equal. He wrote a “History of Columbia College,” and to the volume known as “Universities and Their Sons” he contributed the Columbia section.

One of the things that endeared him most to Columbia men was his championship of football. In 1905, after Columbia had been severely criticised for her football tactics, and the faculty, in a historic meeting, decided that the sport should be dropped, the Dean was the only friend the undergraduates had. In that meeting he took the stand of the undergraduates and earnestly championed the game. After the close of the football season of 1906 more than two thousand students stormed the Faculty Club, where the Dean was at lunch, and, after singing his song, demanded that he make a speech to them on football. They told him they wanted football, and he said: “I know that, but you know I cannot give it to you. You have behaved as I have always known you to behave, with propriety and dignity, and if you keep on there’s no telling what you may get.”

Football will be played once more at Columbia this year, and more than one alumnus will regret that the venerable Van Am is not in the stands when the opening game is played on South Field.

At the time when Columbia began to expand from a college to a university of many departments, the proposal to do away with the college altogether, and to convert Columbia into a group of graduate schools, was considered. The idea “took” with some of the authorities, and had it not been for vigorous opposition, in which Van Am took a leading part, it is not unlikely that the change would have been made.

When it became known, in the spring of 1910, that the dean was to retire, the students prepared a petition to the faculty, asking them to place him on the roll as dean emeritus. The parchment was afterward framed and hung in the Trophy Room.

At the dinner given by the Columbia alumni to celebrate Dean Van Amringe’s fiftieth year of connection with the University, the presiding officer read from Oliver Wendell Holmes’s class-day poem, and turned to the venerable dean as he quoted:

Was it snowing, I spoke of. Excuse the mistake! Look close--and you’ll see not a sign of a flake! We want some new garlands for those we have shed, And these are white roses instead of the red.